Ghost
by GoddessofSnark
Summary: Scully tries to cope with Mulder's "Death"
1. Chapter 1

A/N Don't own any of it, if I did, I would most gladly own Mulder. Bree Sharp didn't write that song for nothing! This is written after my first X-files binge in 9 years, and I've only seen 8 eps since then, so if it's slightly OOC, don't flame me. But I don't mind any feedback! Go ahead and flame, just not on OOC-ness, I tried my hardest to keep it in character to. 

The light. All he could see was the light. It was brilliant enough to blind him, and he had to raise his arm to block his eyes. His brown hair fell in his face, hiding his face even more. He heard the sounds of voices, and tried desperately to find the source. He felt someone-something, beside him. He fought to turn around, and found that he couldn't. He was frozen in place. Suddenly, as quickly as it all began, things went black. 

***

She looked at the body once again. It couldn't be, it had happened before, and he was fine. But for all purposes, for all scientific reason, Fox Mulder was dead. And now, now he lay, another corpse on her examining table. They hadn't wanted her to do the autopsy, but she felt she had to. 

And what she found was damning. She always had been so skeptical, she never fully believed what he said, but now, now she believed fully. And she regretted not trusting him. She regretted not believing what he said. Perhaps, just maybe, if she had, he would be alive. Maybe if she had, it would be someone else, and he would be there, next to her, awaiting what she said, as he had countless times before. 

But she hadn't. And there he was, on the table in front of her. His normally tan skin was pale, the pallor of death. When she opened his eyes, the once soft, forgiving brown eyes were dull, glassy and distant. She ran a hand across her face, before sitting down, fighting back the tears in vain. As she sat there, staring at the cold steel table, she felt the tears slide down her cheeks. 

***

He awoke with a start. He looked around, trying desperately to find out where he was. Instantly, he recognized it. Scully's examining room. The place he had gone to countless times before, to learn whatever she had learned. He heard the sound of a sob coming from the corner and looked up to find Scully sitting there crying.

He got up and walked over to her, gently placing an arm around her shoulders, attempting to comfort her. But it was almost as if what he did went unnoticed. "Why? Why you? Why now?" She sobbed. He didn't know why she was crying, until he looked up to follow her gaze. 

There, lying on the autopsy table, he found an all too familiar face. His own.

 He stared, shifting his gaze between the autopsy table and Scully. He waved his hand in front of Scully's face, trying to get any form of a reaction out of her. when he didn't, he walked back to the autopsy table, and looked at the body. 

It felt so odd to him to be staring at his own body. He brushed a lock of hair off of the corpse's forehead, but found it to fall back as if he hadn't even touched it. He walked over to the light switch, and switched it off. It flicked off, and then suddenly back on, but Scully gave no sign of noticing. It was as if what he did was unnoticed by anyone else, as if what he did was unnoticed in the psychical world. It was almost as if he was a ghost. 

***


	2. Chapter 2

A/N, Yes, I know there's a lot of sobbing in this chapter. Don't worry, in the next few chapters, there's actually something paranormal other than walking through walls. *g*

She sat there, sobbing. There was a moment when she could have sworn that she felt, a cold, comforting arm around her shoulders, but she chalked it up to just her imagination. The slight flickering of the lights she attributed to the wiring. She hadn't believed then, why should she start now?

Now, she had no reason to believe, not now that he was gone. She took a deep breath and wiped the tears from her face. She adjusted the plastic cap on her head, making sure that all of her hair was safely secured in it, snapped on a fresh pair of gloves, and stepped up to the autopsy table yet again. 

She pulled down the white sheet, exposing his bare chest. She fought to keep the tears back a second time. She did a preliminary examination, checking the body for any marks. She found none, not a single scratch, bruise or bump that was current. What she was really shocked at were just how many scars he had. 

She knew of some, but now, going over him with her careful examiner's eye, she found many more than she thought. She picked up the scalpel, and made to make the long incision that would tell her all about what killed him on the inside, as it obviously wasn't something on the outside. But as she brought the knife to the base of his throat, she found that she couldn't stand to cut him open. 

She took another deep breath, and paused, the scalpel resting in the hollow of his throat, gently denting the flesh, but not cutting through it. After two more tries, she gave up. It was all too fresh, too sudden. She had come from the funeral, and changed into her scrubs, and immediately began trying to find his cause of death. 

She put the scalpel down, and looked down and the cold body before her. "In the morning. I can face this in the morning." She told herself. She draped the thin white sheet back over his chest, and walked out, turning off the light, and closing the door behind her. 

***

He followed her through the building, trying anything he could to get her attention. He finally resorted to plucking a pen off of someone's desk and tossed it at the back of her head. He grinned as her hand went to her head, and she turned around, a curious look on her face. 

She bent down to pick up the pen, and he jumped in front of her. her face grew even more curious. It was obvious she could sense him in some way, but she refused to accept that there was another person there, much less a ghost. "Scully" He said softly. 

She didn't make any sort of sign that she acknowledged what he said. He said her name again, louder. And then he shouted it. That time she sort of noticed it. "Who's there?" She said, her voice slightly quavering. She shrugged, and turned around and started walking again.

"It's just my imagination. I just need some sleep." She told herself, and all but ran to her car. He followed, and decided to test to see if the 'ghosts can walk through walls" theory was a fact, and if it could work on cars as well. To his delight, it did, and he found himself waiting next to Scully, quiet as he could get on the ride to her home. 

***

She sat in the car, and turned up the heat, despite it being a rather warm evening. It just felt cold in her car, the same cold feeling that she had earlier. And the cold seemed to be emanating from the passenger side of her car. She shivered slightly, and tried to talk herself out of it. 

It was just her imagination acting up. She convinced herself of that. She was just paranoid, and depressed. He had just died a few days ago, the funeral had just been that morning. Of course her imagination was acting up. She found herself hoping in some way that Mulder was alive, that he would be waiting for her, that she could show up at his apartment and find him there, sprawled on a couch as he often was. 

She felt the lump in her throat grow again, and her breath catch, stuck on the lump. She took a few deep breaths. "Not while I'm driving." She didn't want to get into an accident at the moment. Although when she thought of it, it did seem slightly appealing. 

She quickly erased the thought from her mind. That was something he would do. He was the one who would do things because of emotion. She needed some provocation before she would do something reckless like that. She was his anchor. 

And he had been hers. He had been the counterweight that she needed. His lighthearted humor always balanced out her seriousness. And now that he was gone, she felt oddly unbalanced. She found herself pulling up to not her apartment, but his. 

She found herself outside the door to number 42. She was about to knock, out of force of habit. She then reached into her purse and dug out her key instead. She unlocked his door, and stepped inside. It was just as it had been the last time she was here. Back when he was still alive.

She walked over to his couch, and collapsed, sobbing. 


	3. Chapter 3

A/N ok, I sorta jumped the shark a bit here, but the suspense was even killing me, so I decided to cut the crap with this chapter. Anyways, do enjoy it!

He hated seeing her like this. He needed her to be strong. He needed her now, more than ever. She was his last tie back to life. He went over to where she was, and cradled her head, gently murmuring to her, trying to get her to sleep.  She was so vulnerable at a moment like this. All he wanted was to be able to protect her. 

And he hated the fact that he couldn't. That she could hardly sense his presence, and even when she did, wrote it off as some strange thing, a figment of her imagination. He needed to find out what had happened to him. And he couldn't do that without her. 

He had to do something though. She fell asleep, sprawled out on his couch. He got up, and walked out of the apartment. He knew he had seen a book, one that might help him, at the local library, when he had been there a few weeks previously. 

He found it slightly different going completely on foot. But nonetheless, he got there, and found that being able to bypass the doors was a great help. He fought to remember where he saw it, and finally found it. A book on ghosts, and how probable they were. 

He quickly leafed through it until he found the spot that he was looking for, and bookmarked it, before bringing it back to the office, and leaving it on the desk. Being dead had one advantage. He didn't have to sleep. It reminded him of that time a while ago, with the Vietnam Vets. 

He found it too early to go back home, it was almost dawn. So he sat in the office, and tried to figure out what exactly had happened to him. he knew his body was dead, that to anyone who looked on, he was just another corpse. But yet, there he was, sitting in a chair, trying to come up with why he was out here, and his body lay in a refrigerator, waiting for Scully to work up the nerve to perform the autopsy.

***

She awoke the next morning on his couch. It took her a moment to remember where she was, and how she got there, and when she did, she had to fight down the wave of grief that washed over her. she was so upset, she was nearly ill. She fought it down, and let her cool-headedness take over.

She drove back to her apartment quickly, and changed into something comfortable. She didn't want to be bothered with something too hard to put on right now. before she knew it, she was back at the office, preparing herself to face the autopsy that was looming in front of her. 

She knew Skinner had told her to pass it off to someone else, but she couldn't. She needed to find out for herself what had happened to him. she pulled the body from the refrigerator, and wheeled the cold metal table back into the middle of the room. 

She turned around, to grab the small tape recorder that was on the desk behind her. she found a book there also. Curious as to where the book came from, she picked it up, and looked at it. It was all on ghosts, with one section bookmarked. She flipped to it, and read it over. 

"Not every ghost is a so-called 'spirit of the dead'. Some ghosts are a projection of a body's subconscious onto the astrophysical plane. Many times the body, minus both the conscious and the subconscious enters a state of extreme torpor and stasis." That was all she needed to read. 

She walked back to his body, and gently opened an eyelid. She shined her small penlight into the eye, and all but gasped when the pupil constricted. No dead body reacted to any form of stimuli. She broke into a wide grin, not being able to do anything else. 


	4. Chapter 4

It was all the proof that she needed. No dead body had any reaction to light. The only way a pupil could react to light was if they were alive. Every other sign of the body was dead, but that was proof enough for her. There was something there, even if she didn't know what it was. Even if it was just the body reacting on a primal level, on an instinctual, animalistic level, he was still alive.  
  
Then she saw it. Out of nowhere, a pen scribbling on a piece of paper. A pen held my no one. A piece of paper that appeared from nowhere. She couldn't help but beam at the empty air, knowing that something, anything was there. Something related to him.  
  
"Scully, it's me." The piece of paper read. It was his familiar narrow scrawl. She reached for the empty air around the piece of paper, but found nothing but cold air, air much colder than the area around it. air so cold it made her shiver, but she couldn't help but be happy at the same time.  
  
"Mulder!" she all but shrieked. The knowledge that he was alive, that he could communicate to her, even if she couldn't see him. he was there with her, he was comforting her. "What happened?" she asked the air. She felt stupid talking to thin air, but if it was the only way she could talk to him, it would have to do.  
  
He started scrawling a reply, and she crossed back to the body on the silver table. She brushed a lock of hair aside, and looked from the body to the space where the pen was flickering across the paper. She checked the body over, and found absolutely nothing, nothing had changed since the day before.  
  
****  
  
It was so hard for him to write out what had happened. So much had happened. But he couldn't remember much at all. it was a blur to him, it was just a combination of random sequences. He had almost no memory. Everything he could remember had to do with her, and nothing else.  
  
A flash of blinding white light. That was the one thing he remembered most. The light, and how it shone in his eyes, how it had blinded him. he remembered trying to shield his eyes. And that was it. he remembered hitting the ground, and the next thing he knew, he was waking up to the sound of Scully sobbing over his body, believing him to be dead.  
  
He tried to express this through words, but he found words to be failing him. he watched her examining him, feeling odd, to be watching his own body. He looked down at the paper, and rapped the pen loudly against the desk to get her attention, before he held up the meager amount of things that he had written down.  
  
"A white light.then nothing. Help me Scully." Was all he had managed to write. He was desperate to find out what had happened to him. it was so odd, so foreign to be forced to sit on the sidelines not able to do anything, not being able to say things, not being able to do much of anything. He wanted to know what was wrong with him, what made him a ghost. And most of all, he wanted to know how to turn back.  
  
Scully was the only one that could help him now. she was the only one who knew that he was still at least partially alive. She had to help him, she had to do something. His Scully, the one he'd loved for so long, was the one who had to help him. it was then that he realized what he had just thought. He loved her. and he didn't realize it until he couldn't do anything about it. 


	5. Chapter 5

His message was so pleading, so desperate. She could just picture his emotion. He wanted her to help him. and she wanted to help him. the knowledge of his life, the fact that he was alive was the spark inside of her. She felt so much younger; she suddenly had a new burst of energy.  
  
She crossed the small examining room back to the desk where the book lay, still open to the page that he had marked. She read back over the passage, and over the rest of the chapter. It didn't say much more than those few words about what had happened, although she was able to pull at least one small conclusion from it.  
  
He wasn't dead. She knew that already. But something, somehow, had not only caused him to lose consciousness, but had also stopped all unconscious thought as well. He had no brain function, but yet, at the same time, he was alive. It was as if he was hibernating.  
  
What she needed to find out was how to get his body to work again, to bring him back to the physical realm. That was what she was best at though. Working things through scientifically, logically. There was some rational explanation for how he could still be alive yet his heart not beat and he's not breathing. There had to be a reason why he was in torpor.  
  
And just as there had to be some explanation for what had happened, there had to be some easy way to bring him back. There had to be some way that would have him walking around in the three-dimensional world rather than wherever he was. There had to some way that she could see him again, there had to be a way to communicate with him that didn't involve a piece of paper floating in the air.  
  
And now all she needed to do was look. Research. Legwork. Anything it took to get to the bottom of this. So she could bring him back. She never realized how important he was to her until now. now she realized how empty she felt without him, it was as if there was a void inside of her. a void that only he could fill. And the ghost of him wasn't enough to fill that void.  
  
***  
  
She looked so happy. And so serious. He knew that she was determined to find out what had happened to him. She was as determined as he was. He needed to find out what had happened. He couldn't stand what was wrong with him. He needed to be able to communicate, not just be a spectator.  
  
The only time he liked to be a spectator was at sports games. Being a spectator to his own life disturbed him, and although he was hesitant to admit it, it scared him. he didn't like to be afraid. He liked to be fearless, he wasn't afraid of the unknown.  
  
But this was unknown, this was the paranormal, this was his realm. And it scared him to know that he was helpless, that he had no clue what happened. He was helpless, lost to something he should know. But now, he was lost, now he couldn't even do anything to help himself, now he couldn't even get to the bottom of things himself.  
  
He always was slightly independent. He liked to work alone. He didn't mind having a partner, but he still liked doing things his own way. But his entire life in the fate of one person, he didn't like that, but the fact that it was Scully soothed him. He wouldn't allow anyone else but Scully handle things.  
  
She was the one he could trust most in the world she was the one that he could count on. For once, he loved her doubting nature; he wanted her to work through things scientifically. As much as he loved the paranormal, he trusted science, at least science was a plausible explanation. At least with science you have proof, at least with science; you end up with a end result.  
  
And that's what he wanted. He didn't care what he believed in anymore. The frustration clouded out everything. Anything to get back to being able to say something, anything. Anything to get to be able to have people see him, anything to be able to hold her in his arms. Just be able to feel again, to sense again, that's what he wanted. And science could prove that. For once he didn't want to believe. 


End file.
